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The Girl UFOlogists Called ‘Alien’ 55

The Controversial Study

of a Girl Who UFOlogists

Called ‘Alien’

DNA analysis done on unusual

remains found in Chile proved
the girl was human, but there has
been an uproar over whether the

body was acquired ethically.

by Sarah Zhang

Before the media frenzy, before the
documentary about aliens, before her bone
fragments were ground up for DNA analysis,
she was a girl. reported that the Chilean National Monuments expect to be caused by simple cell division.”
She was tiny when she died. Six inches. Council is investigating whether the girl’s body The rest of the discussion is meandering
Perhaps she was stillborn or died very young. had been dug up and sold illegally. and technical enough that a nonexpert would
Her body was reportedly found wrapped in cloth come away with doubt. In the film, Nolan also
with a purple ribbon and buried—with There was a time, of course, when the ethics of says she has a Y chromosome—a mistake, he
intentionality, it would seem—near a church in working on bodies found in old graves were acknowledged to me, due to his inexperience
La Noria, an abandoned town in the Atacama taken as uncomplicated. Artifacts were with this kind of DNA analysis. (The extra
desert in northern Chile. plundered, graves robbed, bones taken back to mutations may also be the result of DNA
As for everything else, well, it went like Europe where 19th-century researchers degradation over the decades.) For the paper
this. In 2003, a local man who regularly analyzed them according to their 19th-century published this week, Nolan brought on experts
scavenged La Noria for historical trinkets found ideas of race. Bodies that did not conform to a in genetics and in paleogenomics to do the DNA
her body. He noted the unusual conical shape of European standard—like the elongated skulls of analysis. They found some mutations that may
her head. Almost immediately, photos of her mummies found in Peru—were likened to that explain the shape and hardness of her bones.
began to circulate, and ufologists eager for of animals. As anthropology and archaeology They determined she was, in fact, a girl, and she
evidence of aliens came calling. A businessman became professionalized, scholars have was of both indigenous and European ancestry.
bought her body and brought it to Spain. She seriously grappled with the dehumanizing and None of the paper’s coauthors are
featured prominently, as the “Atacama unethical practices of the past. archaeologists or anthropologists though. And
humanoid,” in a documentary called Sirius, Yet, conspiracies have persisted. The none of them were Chilean. By Wednesday, the
which alleges, among other things, contact elongated skulls in Peru keep popping up in Chilean Association of Archaeologists and the
between aliens and ancient civilizations. On alien documentaries—even as anthropologists Chilean Society of Biological Anthropology
screen, the filmmakers are shown cutting her have explained the practice of binding babies’ issued statements denouncing the research. The
skull open, and removing a rib fragment for heads among pre-Columbian Peruvians. The girl two organizations and 11 other Chilean
DNA analysis. in La Noria died only decades ago, and her researchers also signed a letter to the journal that
That DNA analysis was published last unusual appearance is likely unrelated. But there published the study. “The scientific community
week—in Genome Research, a legitimate is this history of unearthing non-European in Chile is deeply upset and concerned about this
journal, and authored by a team of legitimate bodies and proclaiming them to be alien, as situation,” they wrote, adding that studies like
biologists led by Garry Nolan of Stanford Christopher Heaney has written in The Atlantic. this encouraged the looting of archaeological
University. That Nolan came to work with the Heaney, who is a historian of modern Latin sites.
makers of an alien-conspiracy documentary is America at Penn State University, says the sale “In the Atacama Desert, unfortunately,
unorthodox, to say the least. But it was an of the girl’s body “relies upon an industry of ancient sites are often looted. Many are not
opportunity to study rare mutations that could ufology.” properly managed or delimited,” Bernardo
explain her unusual bones as well as an Nolan at Stanford first heard about the Arriaza, a Chilean anthropologist who studies
opportunity to restore to her a small measure of girl when he caught wind of the making of mummies in the Atacama Desert, wrote in an
dignity. Sirius. He studies immunology, and he had no email. “It is a tragedy that a mother lost a baby,
The DNA analysis proved what particular experience with old DNA but he told a miscarriage perhaps, but also a shame that
scientists had been saying all along: She is the New York Times he contacted the looters got the body and sold it for a couple of
human. She could have died as recently as filmmakers on a “lark.” (Nolan declined to be dollars.”
decades ago based on the preservation of her interviewed for this story, though he briefly For archaeologists and anthropologists,
DNA. In interviews, Nolan told journalists he answered a couple questions over email. He the ethical lapses in the handling of the girl’s
believed her body should be returned to Chile. wrote in that email “I won’t be doing any more body are glaring. “My first reaction as
This redemptive scientific narrative took interviews any time soon—very behind on bioarchaeologist is I wasn’t happy. I was a little
shape, only to be punctured by a sharply critical ‘regular’ science of my lab. We’ll have some disgusted,” says Sabrina Agarwal at UC
editorial in Etilmercurio, a Chilean science thoughts to make—but it will not be on a time Berkeley. She ticked off the issues: how the
website. Cristina Dorador condemned the DNA line that meets your deadlines given our other girl’s body was found and sold, the lack of local
analysis as unethical given the origins of the commitments.”) He agreed to do the DNA stakeholders, the lack of an ethics statement in
girl’s body. “If samples are obtained unethically, analysis if the filmmakers presented his findings the published paper. “It’s part of the darker
any resulting science is not ethical, and as such, in their documentary. history of all of bioarchaeology and
should not be published,” she wrote. Then, the In the documentary, Nolan says about his anthropology. It’s not like we are not part of it,”
gut punch: “Would these authors be happy preliminary findings, “I can say with absolute says Agarwal. “But contemporary
working on the body of a surreptitiously buried certainty that it is not a monkey. It is human, or bioarchaeologists and anthropologists are very
child from Boston, MA or Santa Barbara, CA? as close to human, closer to human than sensitive to how they look at human remains.”
Or are the ethics of working on children from chimpanzees would be. But when you count up
less-developed nations less complicated?” the number of mutations that we are observing, (Continued on Page 56)
On Wednesday, the New York Times what we’re seeing is more than what we would